Surge in use of rape against women and rivals by Haiti gangs
November 11, 2022
It was love at first sight for Madeline*, who first met Baptiste* at a church retreat in Haiti’s southern port town of Les Cayes in 2002. As infatuated teenagers, they eventually wed and settled in the Caribbean country’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
With a growing family and unsteady work selling bottled sodas and food staples, the couple could only afford to rent in Cité Soleil, a seaside shantytown where armed groups have turned streets into battlegrounds.
The gang violence became so intense in July of this year that Madeline and Baptiste made the agonising choice to send their six children away to a shelter, for safety. Days later, the pair awoke in the middle of the night to find the neighbourhood in flames. Read More >>
AP Exclusive – More than 100 UN peacekeepers ran a child sex ring in Haiti
April 12, 2017
PORT-AU-PRINCE—In the ruins of a tropical hideaway where jetsetters once sipped rum under the Caribbean sun, the abandoned children tried to make a life for themselves. They begged and scavenged for food, but they never could scrape together enough to beat back the hunger, until the UN peacekeepers moved in a few blocks away.
The men who came from a faraway place and spoke a strange language offered the Haitian children cookies and other snacks. Sometimes they gave them a few dollars. But the price was high: The Sri Lankan peacekeepers wanted sex from girls and boys as young as 12.
“I did not even have breasts,” said a girl, known as V01 — Victim No. 1. She told UN investigators that over the next three years, from ages 12 to 15, she had sex with nearly 50 peacekeepers, including a “Commandant” who gave her 75 cents. Sometimes she slept in UN trucks on the base next to the decaying resort, whose once-glamorous buildings were being overtaken by jungle. Read More >>
Haiti Gunmen Open Fire on Crowd; 5 Dead
March 7, 2004
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Gunmen opened fired Sunday on thousands of unarmed demonstrators calling for the prosecution of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, killing four protesters and a foreign journalist in the worst attack since the Haitian president’s fall.
U.S. Marines returned fire – the first known armed action by U.S. forces sent to stabilize the country – but angry survivors accused the Marines and their French colleagues of not doing enough to prevent the attack.
Blood slicked the floors of a private hospital where victims were rushed. Women screamed and men cried as the few doctors tried to treat the injured with little medication. Read more >>